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Beeston talks current state of affairs

As promised yesterday, here is the transcript of a brief scrum with Blue Jays president Paul Beeston. It’s obviously much, much shorter than the 6,000-plus transcript of Alex Anthopoulos‘ media availability but there are still some interesting nuggets to take out of this:

Can you do an all-dirt infield?

“It’s not going to happen for the next five years, four years, or until we deal with the Argos situation. Because of the way the stands move, because of the fact it’s multi-purpose, that’s not going to happen. The way we’d like to see it is an all-grass field, we would put it in on March 1st and leave it there until the end of the baseball season. It can be done.”

Is there more money available for this team?

“In all honesty, I think we have to look at each case and whether or not it makes sense. We have a great owner. What I said before, we’ll spend money when the opportunity is right. The opportunity has been right before and we actually didn’t get the deal done. So, when Alex did this deal, and when he signed Melky Cabrera, the reality of the situation is that we had been down this path before. It didn’t get done, but we knew we had the support of Rogers and Rogers is 100% owners, they don’t have to go to anybody else.

“From the point of view, if there is more and it makes sense and you can improve the team I think the answer to that is yes. I don’t know that but I have absolutely no reason to say the answer is no. They have been terrific all the way along. We didn’t execute for a lot of different reasons.”

“I don’t know if they learned, I learned. There’s no use in spending money just for the sake of spending money. There’s smart money and there’s dumb money. We want to spend smart money, we think we spent smart money. But we don’t start Spring Training until Feb. 15, we’ll find out whether it’s smart money or not at that time.

“But we actually believe we improved the club. Our goal is to be a team that wins on a sustainable basis. He didn’t give away the farm system but he gave away potentially great players in the sense of the way they project. And I think the reason we were able to do it, is the money that has been spent in the last three years in the farm system. I would think maybe Washington spent more than us, but I don’t know anyone else that spent more than us in the farm system.”

In terms of players or?

“In terms of dollars. We’ve been spending, $15,16,17-million a year. So from the point of view, the way that we would sign guys that we picked up as a sandwich pick, I think Sanchez came that way, Nicolino. So, I don’t have any question that Rogers …. (inaudible) … because I think Rogers wants to win but you can’t just go buy a team.

Last winter, you said in the three of next five years Toronto would make the postseason. Do you still stand by those comments?

“The way that question went, we had one-year, three-year, five-year, and I said two-to-three years actually and I still believe that. That’s the goal. We’re not spending this money guaranteeing we’re going to win, but we’re not spending this money expecting we’re going to be an also-ran either. That’s the truth.”

Whether TV deal for MLB helped the funds become available this offseason…

“No. The real reason is that we have to show the fans there’s a reason to come out. We have a lot of empty seats that we fill, we have a lot of suites that we can fill. We’ve got a lot of things that can generate revenue and we’ll put it back into the baseball team. I don’t worry about that, we can play with the big boys financially but we’re still going to spend smartly and we’re not going to have really long-term contracts. I like three years, now they’ve talked me into five, but I can’t see us going to like 10-year contracts.”

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